Compelling viewing, though a somewhat uneven miniseries

We borrowed this miniseries from the Ottawa Public Library. My husband
(an Australian) was mortified that we would spend 10 hours watching TV
in one week (the library's time limit for videos), and after the first
episode I also thought that we would probably not get through the lot.
But eventually we got caught up in the program as it evolved, becoming
somewhat bizarre even, reminding us from time to time of the magical
realism of some Latin American writers.

The series takes place in a immigrants' welcome camp in the middle of
nowhere in Australia, following the lives of administrators and
immigrants ("inmates" according to a camp director). The story is a
mixture of life in the camp and the individual histories of the
immigrants, some of which is told in flashbacks. Certainly we felt that
some stories were unusual even extreme, to the point of edginess. The
outside world interferes little which is a bit odd considering that
this camp was supposed to be a transitory place for the immigrants
whose aim should be to find work and integrate into Australian life.

The writing definitely improves as the series advances, but the show
remains a mixture of predictable and (sometimes very) surprising turn
of events. The same can be said about the acting. I particularly liked
Linda Cropper (Lady Bev) and of course Cate Blanchett (Bianca) is eery,
creepy and ephemeral at the same time. Hugo Weaving is also excellent
as an embattled English teacher while I must admit I often didn't
understand what the actress who played his daughter was saying which
was a pity as she was the quasi narrator at the beginning of each
episode.

Overall, an interesting miniseries, worth watching if you have 10 spare
hours on your hand. Don't expect to learn much about the struggles of
new immigrants in Australian society, this is more a collection of
quirky stories of a closed village.

One last thing: they didn't include the usual disclaimer at the end "No
animal was harmed in the making this movie" even though quite a number
of sheep get knocked off - as is typical in the Australian outback, I
guess.

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:

Reality versus artistic licence

I've just begun watching this series. As an English migrant who came to
Australia in the 1960's and lived in a hostel (long since gone), I
thought it would be a relatively realistic interpretation of the
hostels; the problems, the fights, the isolation, the friendships. but
it seems to be a very imaginative take on the situations encountered.

E.g; dining in a rather swish manner. Not where I stayed.

Having recently visited one of the remaining (unused)hostel sites in
Australia; Bonegilla in Victoria, it is easy to work out that the
location is meant to be there. Imagine travelling across the world from
war ravaged Europe in 1947 to a small country location at least 4 hours
from Melbourne and finding a dry, parched scene where rain is not
plentiful and there is nowhere to go. My heart goes out to those
people, but, many who stayed in Asutralia would say it was the making
of them.

I will persevere with the series based on other viewers comments, but
with an adjusted view of my expectations of the story.

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6 out of 9 people found the following review useful:

Short lived... but why?

An often forgotten TV series about a strange migrant experience... 1950's
Australia saw mass emigration from Europe to the frontier countries, this
mixture set in a migrant camp is varied and colourful to say the least.
This series is highly recommended, and was too quickly
forgotten.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:

Pot-Boiler Extraordinaire

I checked this out of my local library because of my admiration for
Cate Blanchett. Her role in this long drama is actually a fairly minor
one, and probably the least well-delineated character. I can't believe
I made it through all the episodes, disliking it as much as I did. The
best aspect of this drama is the outstanding acting 3 individuals:
Mitchell Butel in the character of Nino, Linda Cropper as Bev, and
Geoff Morrell as H.G. Bates. All three were new names for me, hence
their performances were not only outstanding and subtle enough to
nearly convince me to believe in the narrative, but also provided the
excitement of discovering new (to me) talent! Sadly, the drama has many
flaws, the worst of which is the inability to understand clearly much
of the speech, especially that of Louisa, who is the voice of the
narrator. Her British dialect is so thick that throughout the first few
episodes I understood more of the Italian! Had the DVD set I borrowed
actually included subtitles, the whole drama would have been clearer
and more enjoyable. Does such a version exist, I wonder? I also found
the pace to be deadly slow, with a great deal of time spent in various
characters mooning and fantasizing about unrequited or dead lovers and
in small groups of sad characters drinking themselves into oblivion. As
a surprising murder takes place and lovers go back and forth,
pregnancies occur, miscarriages are planned and carried out, etc. it
seems that the story has devolved into a huge soap opera, spinning way
beyond a believable tale. All in all, many characters are just annoying
if not outright wicked. Yet, somehow, the writer assumes we will find
them lovable or deserving of interest anyway. The relentless self-pity
of some of characters is simply tedious. I found it impossible to
believe in the Louisa-Nino relationship, ditto the Bev-Joe
relationship. At the end, I felt inexpressibly sad for Geoff Morrell's
character. Cate Blanchett's character is unpleasant and not really
comprehensible. In short, the immigrant camp is a collection of raging
drama-queens! Most of the dramatic tension in this series is created by
the question of whether different characters will commit suicide or
not. None of them have anything on their minds other than their sex
lives or alcohol. Surely, such a diverse collection of people would
yield something a bit more interesting, but this writer doesn't have
the imagination to go there.

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2 out of 4 people found the following review useful:

Well worth the time

9 of 10 -- I went ahead and got this for the same reason many will, as
it becomes more widely known - Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett BOTH
thought it was worth doing? 'Hell, Yeah, lemme lookit that...' The
characters in this TV mini-series are slo-oo-wly... splendidly
developed... At the end of the second ep., I thinks 'yeah, this was
worth the buy...' then the fourth, fifth and finally the absolutely
devastating sixth eps., I will be telling everyone to give this a
look... no Netflix folks, gonna hafta' pony-up. I recommend that you
do. The deep love for the characters in the screen-writing makes up for
the budget and the occasional loss of focus. These characters deserved
the screen-time -you wanted more from every one of them- and I found
myself thinking about them and the series quite a lot the following day
/ week that it took to get back. The acting is top, and the story-line
is unusual...

note: as mentioned by another reviewer, this is -probably- not for
kids. There is really no way to explain why without spoilers, but I'm
not the most conservative person. I believe that it would be rated 15
in Australia, and I would agree with that.

I don't write reviews as a rule, and reading this you know why - but as
a US Aussiephile I was looking, as a fan of the two widely-known
actors, I bought (the actors that I didn't know very well have pages of
credentials in international films that I've not seen - a terrific cast
and casting work - Alex Menglet has a new and dedicated fan).